Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 Hard Drive Failures

Question

Hey all,   Recently we adopted a new naming convention for all the PCs in our environment so I started going around changing the computer names on the network.   While doing so, I figured it would be a good idea to run the disk cleanup wizard and also defrag the drives since the machines most likely needed that done.   In the process, I ran into several problems.   Out of about 150 Dell GX270 machines that were done, about six of them all would not boot back up or boot back up to blue screens.   Going through the IDE Drive Diagnostics, I received error codes ranging from Failure Code 7 to messages that an error occurred and the diagnostics could not be run.   So, I hopped onto the diagnostic partition and ran the Hard Drive diagnostics from there.  During the reading portion, I received error 0F00:0244 on multiple occasions which gives error: Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected   So, all these machines have the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 Hard Drive, the 40 GB drives.  This is a failure rate of 4%, which is incredibly high for a hard drive.   I have read other posts online through Google and it sounds like many others are having trouble with these drives.   I attempted to repartition the drives, format, and even attempt a disk wipe on a few and they all would not work.   Just wondering if anyone else has had any problems on any scale with these drives.   I have two more drives to send off for warranty replacement on Monday.   Brian S. A+, Net+, 2000 MCSA

ejn63 · Answer

Yes, the drives are problematic. In fact, Dell dropped Maxtor as a supplier over the problems with them. Unfortunately, Maxtor hasn't stepped up and recalled the drives - then again, neither did IBM with the infamous Deathstar drives of a couple of years ago.

tcole · Answer

Ironically I lost my hard drive last night.  Same Machine GX 270T.  Google is an amazing tool as I went on a search, listing:  Error Code 0f00:0244 which in conclusion brought me to your post.  Although I am frustrated that this occured I am a little more l relieved the cause was not due to an operator error.  I am not sure of my warranty period but I hope I have some form of remedy.  I am not sure Dell's only problem is the GX 270.  There may be others.  In my brief search I found another post on another site referencing a Dell notebook, with the same error code experiencing the same.

BBraxton · Answer

Amazing to me are two experiences after blue screen: 1) I can F8 boot into safe mode and 2) I remove the base stick of RAM and set it aside and then swap the second stick RAM into the base position and the system boots regularly fine. I got the hint elsewhere on DellTalk to check the memory.

Michael D600 · Answer

Same here today with a Maxtor 120 GB SATA drive. Same symptoms in the IDE Check utility and with the Dell utilities on the Service partition. Seems Maxtor had a major problem with their drives.

Michael

mdrago · Answer

I'm glad to hear Dell dropped Maxtor.  These drives were the bane of my existence for the first half of this year.  They ran so hot you could fry an egg on them. :smileymad:  We replaced all of our Maxtors with Seagate drives and haven't had any problems yet.

bks2 · Answer

I am amazed that there has not been a recall on these drives.  Afterall, I believe that their failure rate is much higher than the IBM hard drives that went to court.   So far, we've now had about 15 drives fail out of the 150 or so Dell GX270's we have... a whopping 10% failure rate when the failure rate is normally below 0.1%.   Brian S.

werfer · Answer

Have had better luck with Maxtors than the WD caviars that Dell seems to have gone to. Purchased 4 Maxtors over the last 2 years and all still work fine, meanwhile my Dell 8200 has gone through 5 WD Caviar 40GB HD's so far.

ITMasterA · Answer

It appears that Dell's customer service is the pits.  My company who is affilated with a large university and has purchasing power through the university is seriously considering dropping Dell from their computer purchases.  I also know that the university is also considering the same thing.  To much valuable data is being lost.  Dell should consider a full recall so that customers can perform a data transfer to a new hard drive before the valuable is lost.  It would show that Dell cares more about the customer than their profits.

BBraxton · Answer

This is also a university setting. Our Dell computers are networked in Windows server 2000 environment, My Documents folder is synchronized at logout and all that gets backed up nightly.

dirtybird119 · Answer

Okay, http://dell-gx280-stinks.blogspot.com/ is my new spot to rant about how poor my GX280 has been since i have had it.
Check it out, and please post your comments!
I have replaced

Memory
Motherboard
Heatsink

and now, both my Maxtor HD have just given me the error code 7 - read error!
Both? What in the world! Has anyone had both die at the same time?

Now, this will be the 4th time I have to reinstall OS(XP)/ and other programs. Guess I'd better bring my cot to work!

I think our university needs to cancel its orders/contracts with Dell. This is crazy! Oh, and they said *if* they replaced my machine i would still get a GX280 cause they are still in production.
Bad Dell!
Please make things better!

Message Edited by dirtybird119 on 06-24-2005 04:04 PM

speedstep · Answer

System Boards with Failed capacitors will corrupt the data on the drives.

bks2 · Answer

Yep, that would explain it.   The hard drives started going down at our location.  Overall, we have replaced at least 25% of all the hard drives in the GX270's.   Now, the motherboards are starting to go.  People will be using the machines and all of a sudden, the screen will go black and into power-saving mode while the computer appears to be powered on.  The computer does not respond to any keyboard/mouse inputs.  The only way to get it to come back on is to do a hard-reboot.  Even after doing that, the computers will do the same thing in an hour, and sometimes only a few minutes.   All of these motherboards have bulging capactors and sometimes you can see this brown crusty stuff coming out of the top of the capacitors.   However, Dell will not confirm that it is a problem.  Luckily our machines are still under warranty but when they fall out of warranty, the expense of fixing these faulty motherboards falls back onto the company.  Sure seems kind of strange that we've replaced gobs of parts on these GX270's but yet, Dell says it affects less than 1% of the GX270's.

dirtybird119 · Answer

So how do I tell if my MB is bad or not? How do I detect a Failed capacitors????

bks2 · Answer

Look at the capacitors themselves.  If they are normal, they will be flat on the top.  If they have problems, or will cause problems, then they will begin to bulge out at the top and will not be flat.

Storage, Drives & Media

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 Hard Drive Failures

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